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Geomechanics and Engineering
  Volume 13, Number 6, December 2017 , pages 907-928
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/gae.2017.13.6.907
 


Influences of seepage force and out-of-plane stress on cavity contracting and tunnel opening
Jin-Feng Zou, Kai-Fu Chen and Qiu-Jing Pan

 
Abstract
    The effects of seepage force and out-of-plane stress on cavity contracting and tunnel opening was investigated in this study. The generalized Hoek-Brown (H-B) failure criterion and non-associated flow rule were adopted. Because of the complex solution of pore pressure in an arbitrary direction, only the pore pressure through the radial direction was assumed in this paper. In order to investigate the effect of out-of-plane stress and seepage force on the cavity contraction and circular tunnel opening, three cases of the out-of-plane stress being the minor, intermediate, or major principal stress are assumed separately. A method of plane strain problem is adopted to obtain the stress and strain for cavity contracting and circular tunnel opening for three cases, respectively, that incorporated the effects of seepage force. The proposed solutions were validated by the published results and the correction is verified. Several cases were analyzed, and parameter studies were conducted to highlight the effects of seepage force, H-B constants, and out-of-plane stress on stress, displacement, and plastic radius with the numerical method. The proposed method may be used to address the complex problems of cavity contraction and tunnel opening in rock mass.
 
Key Words
    seepage force; out-of-plane stress; cavity contraction; generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion
 
Address
Jin-Feng Zou and Kai-Fu Chen: School of Civil Engineering, Central South University, Hunan 410075, China

Qiu-Jing Pan: Laboratory 3SR, Grenoble Alpes Unviersity, CNRS UMR 5521, Grenoble, France
 

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